Farm Forestry New ZealandMachinability of 28-year-old Eucalyptus globoidea wood
By Hamish Scown & Clemens Altaner, January 2023.
Download SWP-T155 (pdf)
Executive summary
This report relates to SWP work plan 131 ‘Wood products from NZDFI species’, milestone 5 ‘Machinability of Eucalyptus globoidea; outdoor demonstration product’. The overall objective was to assess the technical feasibility of manufacturing various products from durable eucalypts and produce demonstration products, which could be used for marketing purposes.
E. globoidea heartwood boards cut from 28-year-old trees grown on Banks Peninsula were available. These boards were live-sawn with a mobile horizontal bandsaw from logs salvaged from trees that were felled in course of the SWP-funded work to establish heartwood volume and taper functions for E. globoidea (Boczniewicz, Mason et al. 2022).
Demonstration products, which were produced, are to be displayed at the National Field Days 2022. An outdoor bench was installed prominently at the entrance to the School of Forestry.
The comparative machinability study has shown that E. globoidea machines equally well or even better than Pinus radiata, which is known for its good solid wood processing characteristics. Consequently, solid wood processors set up to work with radiata pine can obtain satisfactory results with E. globoidea without the need to invest in new machinery. This was the result of a BForSc(Hon) dissertation, which is added as appendix to this report.
The machinability samples are available to be used as gifts or demonstration samples.
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